Your Right to Know

WASHINGTON — Ohio Attorney General Mike DeWine said yesterday that a state program he helped
devise two decades ago has dramatically reduced the number of young people in state juvenile
prisons.

Testifying before a Senate subcommittee, DeWine said state and local officials crafted a system
that allows local juvenile court judges to use state dollars to finance programs that allow young
offenders to remain in their communities, instead of being funneled into an Ohio Department of
Youth Services’ facility.

“These judges came up with some amazing programs and (they were) programs that were tailored for
that particular child,” DeWine, a former member of the U.S. Senate, told the panel.

He said juvenile judges could offer young offenders intensive educational training, including on
Saturdays, while keeping them in their communities through intense probation, adding that the
judges “did all kinds of innovative things. And it worked very well.”

DeWine said the Department of Youth Services population has dropped from 2,600 in 1992 to 551
this October. DeWine said those remaining at Youth Services facilities are the “most problematic
kids” who had to be sent to the state for custody.

The hearing held by the Senate subcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights and Human Rights
dealt with what has been called the “school-to-prison pipeline,” in which tens of thousands of
young people are sent to jail as opposed to rehabilitation programs.DeWine was one of nine
witnesses to testify before the panel, which was chaired by Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill.

DeWine said when he was lieutenant governor, Republican Gov. George V. Voinovich placed him in
charge of the juvenile-justice system. Describing the system in 1992 as “kind of in disarray,”
DeWine said Youth Services’ facilities were as much as 200 percent overcrowded.

“The economic incentives were all in one way,” DeWine said. “If they kept a kid at the local
level and tried to deal with him or her, total cost was at the county level. If they sent him to
the state, the total cost was to the state. So what do you think we got?”

Instead, DeWine said, state and local officials adopted a new system in which “we had the money
follow the child,” paying for the costs of having the young person stay in his or her
community.

“In essence, the judges said: ‘If you give us the money ... we’ll handle most of these kids,’ ”
DeWine said.